The present invention relates to a technology for controlling storage systems, and in particular to a technology for controlling storage systems having storage virtualization capabilities and advanced storage functions, such as FlashCopy® and Remote Copy.
The administration of a large storage system is a complicated task. An administrator may have control of many thousands of storage devices and it is easy to make a mistake and accidentally select the wrong device when performing a task. For some tasks selecting the wrong device can be disastrous—for example selecting the wrong device as a target for a FlashCopy® (FlashCopy is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States and in other countries) or Remote Copy task. These tasks, among others, can be characterized as “destructive” tasks.
Once a destructive task has started, the data on the target device is lost and, without a backup, recovery may not be possible. Even with a backup, recovery takes a significant time to complete when, for example, the backup is held on tape and all transactions completed since the last backup need to be replayed before the data is available again.
It would thus be desirable to have a technology for controlling advanced storage systems when human error puts data at risk of loss, and in particular to have a technological means for protecting and recovering data after such an error has occurred.